My Home Is My Castle (Essay Sample)

My Home Is My Castle

Do you ever find yourself rushing back to your bedroom after a long day at work or school, then just hiding in the covers while perfectly setting the temperature to your liking? Oh, that wonderful feeling of comfort! Good for you! Believe it or not, as many as 1.6 billion people in the world lacked adequate housing when Habitat for Humanity conducted a survey in 2015.

But what is ‘adequate’ housing? It is not simply 4 walls and a roof, but according to the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner, adequate housing is the right of every woman, man, youth and child to gain and sustain a safe and secure home and community in which to live in PEACE and DIGNITY – things most of us probably take for granted.

Now as I recognize this terrible reality, I look into myself, my family’s capacity, and I try to comprehend, how / what / why do I live in peace without actively fighting for my freedom daily, and how am I able to live with dignity when I simply complain about petty things in my life. In fact, I look at how the people are in my community… There is barely anything special going on here. We all just live to our liking, not worried about the future, because we are sure to have a future. Unfortunately, again, we all take this for granted; but what did I do to deserve living in an adequate home – absolutely nothing. It is all by random circumstance, fortunate events, year of my birth, location of where I was born, political leader of my generation, where I was raised, and even God’s blessing to me that I live happy and secure life. So the way I see it, it’s a game of luck… but I don’t want to trust my life on luck at all.

It wasn’t as easy in the past either. For centuries, a castle has been home to many of world’s most powerful, elite, beloved, rich, hated, condemned, hated individuals or families where they had to be secured, protected or even imprisoned in such huge, fortified, moated structures. This was once the most guaranteed way to secure people. It’s like living in a captivity, whether it’s for one’s safety or for one’s confinement.

I now know better. So as of this moment, I am committed to call my home a place of love and strength, a place of fortified solitude, a hybrid of the structure of an adequate house and the demeanor of a castle. From now on, I will not take my relatively secure home for granted. I will thank the Lord for this gift. I will continue to recognize this blessing and remember that faith must be the foundation of my home, that the pillars signify my parents and the walls be my siblings and relatives. I will stray from the thinking that whatever I want in my house is definitely what I deserve and nothing less of it. I will work hard, appreciate what I have and love my parents for all they have done for me.

It is time I think less about my simple desires and more on how to cultivate my full potential and reap more out of life, since I have been given this wonderful life with a house where I live in peace and dignity.

References:

  • Global Homelessness Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/
  • The Right to Adequate Housing Toolkit. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/toolkit/Pages/RighttoAdequateHousingToolkit.aspx
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